well, then forget any particular comedian or whether or not one version of a story is correct. in general: is it appropriate for a comedian to make a joke that says, essentially, it's funny for a woman to be gang-raped?

Louis CK called a woman a daft cunt because she heckled him. Was he in the right to call her that? I think so. You're losing context here because he didn't just look out into the audience and find a random girl and said "Wouldn't it be funny right now if you were gang raped?"

mouse wrote:

i think you are missing the point about the powerful and the powerless. there is a huge difference between laughing at yourself, and having other people laugh at you.

You're projecting here. You're making it personal. It's not personal for a comedian. You're projecting your emotions and feelings on them and their jokes. You're assuming that because you think it's upseting that their intent is to upset.

mouse wrote:

as there is a difference between, say, a black comedian making fun of white people to a white audience, and a white comedian making fun of black people to that same audience. if you think there is not - try telling some racist jokes to the next few black people you meet. i think you will find that jokes can be deadly serious, and they can have a real effect on people (and i'm not just talking about putting the comedian at risk of being beaten up). jokes that denigrate people are not that different from direct bullying - they are told to humiliate people, to make them fair game for attacks.

Again, you're projecting how that affects you onto other people. If it upsets you, don't go to the show. But I'll do you one better... here are some white comedians telling some pretty funny black jokes to black people who are laughing btw...

There's more and I can put up more links but the point is that you're are adding attachments to the jokes that the comedian didn't. You're assuming he has intent behind the jokes besides making people laugh or that the jokes have some sort of seriousness to them when they're just jokes. You're adding to it; they are not.

mouse wrote:

there are two kinds of rape jokes. one makes fun of the rapist. i have no trouble with that, someone who decides to be a rapist, or thinks rape is an acceptable activity, deserves what he gets.
the other kind makes fun of the victim. they are the ones that suggest raping a woman is funny, that the victim deserves what _she_ got. those, i have problems with. i think those try to make rape acceptable, or at least justifiable. and so, in answer to the original question, yes, i think jokes like that cross a line.

No you need to rephrase that. They cross your line. YOU no longer find them funny. Someone else might. I find some rape jokes funny. And I've yet to find one comedian that endorses rape...oddly enough. I can't find one of them that says their jokes encourage rape. I can't find any quotes of any rape joke where the comedian says they think rape is ok. So if they're not saying it... why are they making it acceptable? They're not telling anyone to seriously go out and rape someone because it'll be funny. So why are you making that connection?

I call B.S. on this anyway because everyone at some time or another has laughed at a joke about someone or some situatioin that could offend or upset someone else. A joke that crossed the line with someone else was funny to you at some point in time.

We don't get to pick and choose what jokes they do. We get to pick and choose which ones we want to watch and listen to._________________I'm doing the twitter thing; you should stalk/follow me: http://twitter.com/sillygurlroo

well, i was perhaps using 'appropriate' in too victorian a sense, some of the best humor is inappropriate. maybe i should have said 'acceptable', or even 'defensible'.

jokes can dance on a delicate edge, and a lot of things factor in whether or not it is funny, including the exact words, the tone, the audience and who says it - snorri's example is perfect; you can think of other examples where one comedian absolutely could not carry off the type of humor another a different comedian can.

but again - i think the crux is, who is it targeted at? louis' joke work because the target is the rapist - he's not making fun of the person who doesn't want to have sex with you, he's making fun of the guy who can't figure anything else to do. maybe there are gang-rape jokes where the gang is the butt of the joke. "wouldn't it be funny if that girl got raped by like 5 or 6 guys right now?" is not that joke.

i guess what i'm saying is, knocking someone off their high horse can be funny. kicking them when they are down, not so much._________________aka: neverscared!

Oh my god there's two of you so bear with me. I love you both but it's very JEN VS THE WORLD (which really means Jules and mouse here) at the moment. Let me try and respond to Jules now...

Snorri wrote:

I didn't mean they were right to be racist, I meant right to be offended at being interrupted. Or more to the point, wrong of me to interrupt a racist when he's being racist.

I think you're wanting me to say here if a comedian goes ape shit and AWOL from his normal material or stick and turns into a propaganda perpetrating machine that hates black people you've the right to say "YOU'RE A RACIST MOTHERFUCKER!"

Yes. If ever a comedian decides to do a 180 and go completely bonkers and turns into a racist asshole that wants nothing more than to spew racist unfunny fucked up shit and enlist the audience to join his crusade... please do confront him.

Better? I never see this scenario ever happening because I can't even remember a comedian that drops their schtick and type of comedy to do something COMPLETELY different. But if it does happen, and it happens to be unfunny racist bullshit. Call them on it.

Now my question to you is... What do you think is racist in comedy? If a comedian who is white tells a black joke are they a racist? Because the definition of racism is thinking, acting, doing something that entails another race being beneath you or less superior. So if you tell a joke with no intent except to make people laugh are you racist?

And then you'll ask me... can a racist tell a racist joke? Absolutely. But it didn't come out of nowhere and it's not the only thing they've done to indicate they are racist is it?

Snorri wrote:

What makes a comedy show distinct from any other gathering?

Well a few things here. A comedy show is an entertainment show. There are many different types of gatherings. Another detail that distinguishes a comedy show is that you pay to see it. It's a performance, not a gathering.

A gathering suggests that it's a group effort. When really it's a group watching a performance by one person who has rehearsed it and practiced it and does the same show from state to state. So I don't really view comedy shows as just "gatherings." Hell AA meetings are gatherings too. Doesn't make it a performance.

Snorri wrote:

Well it would be more equivalent to going to a broadway show of the Lion King and doing a double take when the first half hour is actually racist speeches.

I am not sure how you got on this racist idea. The only way your situation or scenario works is that if a successful (not a hack) comedian stops doing his normal routine and goes full on Hitler to an audience. The chances and odds of this happening have to be a million to one. But if that case actually happens I do believe it's the exception to the rule.

Snorri wrote:

not talking about people who object to shit because their own feelings are hurt. I don't actually get offended, I'm a rich white male. I'm talking about when the ideas in a show/rally/speech are themselves actually objectively objectionable. I use racism because it's easy, but it could be St Paul's ideas on women or praises of pedophilia or whatever.

Again, I don't know any successful comedian that is any of that. Do you?

Snorri wrote:

I absolutely agree with you. But my point is a larger one in that I'm addressing not the jokes but the message. I don't believe Tosh for example actually believes rape is a good thing, so in that sense I don't think he was in the wrong. But the woman who protested did think Tosh was advocating rape, and though I don't believe she was right I do wonder What If? What if someone does straight up advocate rape on stage. What if a comedian's message behind is joke is in fact that rape is a good thing? What if someone advocates on stage the idea that black people are inferior?

I think you're arguing just to argue. The once off that there's going to be this comedian that advocates any sort of crime is going to have a short lived career... don't you think?

And again, you take this woman's friend's account of what happened verbatim without lifting a finger to get any other person's account of what happened that night because why? You're not even getting it straight from the person that it happened to and arguing in their defense. You don't find that screwed up even in the slightest?

Snorri wrote:

It seems that saying comedy is just jokes is sufficient to protect it from legitimate disagreement, but we all know that jokes can also serve an agenda.

Honestly, your scenarios, while entirely possible because you can't rule out the once in a million... are just what the shit Jules? Name me one successful comedian that has a racist agenda he's pushing? Or a rape agenda? Telling jokes about race and rape doesn't mean you're pushing an agenda. You have to go further than just telling a few jokes about it. To me your whole performance or the majority of it would have to be dedicated to those subjects for me to think you're pushing an agenda.

Snorri wrote:

(there is also an idea somewhere here about the legitimacy comedians have. Over time certain comedians earn the right to say certain things, aside from what they already could say. For example, Louis CK can use the word "nigger" while some 2-bit comedian from the south can't. Not just because he's an established comedian, it has to do with what he has said and how it connects. In that same vein there is a debate about whether Tosh can make jokes about rape and the holocaust and all that. It's not that he's a bad guy, it's just that he has given us much of a reason to assume he knows the proper irony of it.

I agree with most of this. I think in every profession (because that's what stand up comedy is -- a profession, despite it not having a desk and computer) everyone has to earn their due. Theirs is just different than ours. But you're going more in to the mechanics of joke telling and how it works. How you connect with the audience and whether or not you can pull it off.

Snorri wrote:

Sure he attacks everything, but does he really? When he makes a joke about rape can we know that he understands rape is a really bad thing?

Ok, if he's all into rape and doesn't understand it's a bad thing how come he hasn't been arrested for rape then? If you don't know it's a bad thing you would do it. This is silly to me. If I didn't know it was bad to shoot my boss in the head, I would shoot my boss in the head.

I think what you're trying to say here is can he fully grasp the seriousness of the situation? I don't think anyone does until it happens to them or someone they love. Can he understand the bad part about it? Yeah, I think it's safe to say.

Do I think what that woman's friend put on her blog is the complete truth of what happened? Nope. I think there's three sides to every story. What he said, she said, and the truth. I also think the media salivate over a story like this because it gets readers and viewers. So it doesn't matter to them that it wasn't the actual woman telling the story. Try and keep that in mind when you're defending her. Even the people that ran the facility said that was a crock of shit._________________I'm doing the twitter thing; you should stalk/follow me: http://twitter.com/sillygurlroo

Ok you're next lady... I had to go get more beer. I hope I'm not Thying out on you and I'm making sense or reasonable arguments here...

mouse wrote:

well, i was perhaps using 'appropriate' in too victorian a sense, some of the best humor is inappropriate. maybe i should have said 'acceptable', or even 'defensible'.

And this is why comedy is subjective. What you find defensible, someone else is going to find indefensible. Your tolerance meter on what you think is too fucked up to joke about is different than someone else's. And that's fine, but you don't get to tell the comedian they can't do it now that it's crossed your line. You get to turn them off or watch another comedian.

mouse wrote:

jokes can dance on a delicate edge, and a lot of things factor in whether or not it is funny, including the exact words, the tone, the audience and who says it - snorri's example is perfect;

It's also never happened in the history of stand-up comedy and probably never will because he created the most extreme of situations and said "What if?"

Some people get offended when comedians tell jokes that the punchline involves hurting an animal. Hell you'll even hear the audience say "awww." And then the comedian reminds them that the animal isn't real and it didn't happen. He'll probably tease them for their empathy of something that's not real. Meanwhile, other people are laughing at it.

So does that comedian have to take out the joke about the animal because people got upset?

See why it's subjective? You've the power here -- you don't have to go and you don't have to watch. That's what great about comedy. You get to pick and choose who you want to see based on what YOU think is funny.

mouse wrote:

i guess what i'm saying is, knocking someone off their high horse can be funny. kicking them when they are down, not so much.

You're projecting again. You think their joke is kicking them while they're down. You're assuming their intentions based on the fact that they made a joke about it. That's not necessarily true because you think it is. They can be telling a joke about it just to make people laugh including someone that might be included in what the joke is about. Again, you're adding and assuming the intent. You're not the comedian so you can't say what their intent is. Most of the time when they're interviewed they say "it's just a funny joke that made people laugh." And they did their job. Because if people laugh, a comedian has done their job._________________I'm doing the twitter thing; you should stalk/follow me: http://twitter.com/sillygurlroo

If a comedian who is white tells a black joke are they a racist? Because the definition of racism is thinking, acting, doing something that entails another race being beneath you or less superior.

Question: must racism always be about another race? Would it not be racist for a white person to make a joke about "crackers?"

Racism, as I see it, is when the color of a person's skin serves as a basis for action of any sort about that person. It is as racist to hire a black woman because she is dark-skinned as it would be sexist to hire her because she is a woman; in both cases, a rather superficial genetic trait over which she has no control at all is serving as the basis of decision. It doesn't even matter that the decision is in her favor and very likely to her benefit; it is still racist if the decision is based on the color of her skin. It is still racist even if the person hiring her is dark-skinned._________________I am only a somewhat arbitrary sequence of raised and lowered voltages to which your mind insists upon assigning meaning

Racism isn't a matter of appearance. Once upon a time in America, the Irish and Polish and Italians were the victims of racism, and they could be hard to distinguish from their persecutors in many cases. In Japan, I noted some casual racism of one set of residents against another set that I personally found indistinguishable. The first set was prejudiced against the second set because they had Korean ancestry, though the families of set two had lived in Japan for generations. I had to wonder, how would you even know? They looked Japanese. They had Japanese names. They spoke Japanese like they were born there, 'cause they were.

I experienced an occasional bit of discrimination myself while there, landlords who didn't want to rent to me, shopkeepers that didn't want to sell to me, people who would wave me off saying "sorry, I don't speak English" - in Japanese - despite me having greeted them in Japanese! I don't think my pronunciation was that bad, but who knows. It can be very disconcerting, not to mention eye-opening, for someone who has known nothing of privilege, because it has been the water to your fishiness, to discover what life can be like without it. You have weird experiences like going to get a haircut, and all the stylists come over to feel your hair: "you should feel this! It's so fine! Here, come feel!" What the heck, people?

And it's not the same as the experience of being a foreigner. I couldn't escape that, I was reminded of it every day. People would have to shift gears to speak to me sometimes, and some social interactions were mystifying and weird - but only once in a while would I have an encounter that I'd say was racially discriminatory or tinged with prejudice, as opposed to the everyday experience of just being different. You can tell. People telegraph their feelings, and sometimes you just get that vibe - that person doesn't like you because of what you are, not who you are. That's the essence of racism.

Not sure what this has to do with jokes, though._________________The reward for a good life is a good life.

Racism is a joke. Let's consider the number of arbitrary methods to classify and categorize humans: Physical racism, biological racism, geographical racism, cultural racism, socioeconomic racism, sexual racism, among others, have their own dubious hindrances that put the classifications themselves into question. Splitting men into races isn't aiding humanity as much as it is fostering differentiation. And more often than not it serves some other ends. I couldn't even count how many times racism tends to justify greed and discrimination.

i think you are missing the point about the powerful and the powerless. there is a huge difference between laughing at yourself, and having other people laugh at you.

You're projecting here. You're making it personal. It's not personal for a comedian. You're projecting your emotions and feelings on them and their jokes. You're assuming that because you think it's upseting that their intent is to upset.

... You're assuming he has intent behind the jokes besides making people laugh or that the jokes have some sort of seriousness to them when they're just jokes. You're adding to it; they are not.

There is no such thing as "just jokes." If you could "just" make words, without conveying or eliciting emotions, then nothing would be funny. You're pointing out that mouse is adding to the joke like that's unusual, but that's what we do. That's how people interpret language. You can never "just tell jokes," because you are constantly telling them inside a culture that shapes how they're perceived. Communication is half speaker and half listener. The speaker does their best to convey a message that matches their thoughts and feelings, but the listener interprets that message through the filter of their life, emotions, the setting, culture, etc. You can't ignore those things, because they're a huge part of what it means to communicate at all. So there's no such thing as "just jokes." You either pay attention to the connotations of your words or you don't, but they exist whether you intend them to or not.

Quote:

No you need to rephrase that. They cross your line. YOU no longer find them funny. Someone else might. I find some rape jokes funny. And I've yet to find one comedian that endorses rape...oddly enough. I can't find one of them that says their jokes encourage rape. I can't find any quotes of any rape joke where the comedian says they think rape is ok. So if they're not saying it... why are they making it acceptable? They're not telling anyone to seriously go out and rape someone because it'll be funny. So why are you making that connection?

To be fair, though, misogynists rarely call themselves misogynists. They don't say, "I think women ought to be raped!" They say, "She shouldn't have gone out dressed like that," or something else that simply reinforces notions that women are responsible for not attracting attention, that men can't control their urges, or some other sexist bullshit. It doesn't have to be blatant in order to condone rape or one of the subset of beliefs about men and women that combine to encourage it.

Quote:

I call B.S. on this anyway because everyone at some time or another has laughed at a joke about someone or some situatioin that could offend or upset someone else. A joke that crossed the line with someone else was funny to you at some point in time.

We don't get to pick and choose what jokes they do. We get to pick and choose which ones we want to watch and listen to.

And we get to give them hell when they cross our line. Either in person, if we so feel (or dare), or in the realm of social media._________________"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. Iíll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman

Racism isn't a matter of appearance. Once upon a time in America, the Irish and Polish and Italians were the victims of racism, and they could be hard to distinguish from their persecutors in many cases. In Japan, I noted some casual racism of one set of residents against another set that I personally found indistinguishable. The first set was prejudiced against the second set because they had Korean ancestry, though the families of set two had lived in Japan for generations. I had to wonder, how would you even know? They looked Japanese. They had Japanese names. They spoke Japanese like they were born there, 'cause they were.

I experienced an occasional bit of discrimination myself while there, landlords who didn't want to rent to me, shopkeepers that didn't want to sell to me, people who would wave me off saying "sorry, I don't speak English" - in Japanese - despite me having greeted them in Japanese! I don't think my pronunciation was that bad, but who knows. It can be very disconcerting, not to mention eye-opening, for someone who has known nothing of privilege, because it has been the water to your fishiness, to discover what life can be like without it. You have weird experiences like going to get a haircut, and all the stylists come over to feel your hair: "you should feel this! It's so fine! Here, come feel!" What the heck, people?

And it's not the same as the experience of being a foreigner. I couldn't escape that, I was reminded of it every day. People would have to shift gears to speak to me sometimes, and some social interactions were mystifying and weird - but only once in a while would I have an encounter that I'd say was racially discriminatory or tinged with prejudice, as opposed to the everyday experience of just being different. You can tell. People telegraph their feelings, and sometimes you just get that vibe - that person doesn't like you because of what you are, not who you are. That's the essence of racism.

Not sure what this has to do with jokes, though.

There's a weird flipside to racism as well. I've not only experienced discrimination against, but also in favor of. I've seen people approach visually white co-workers with an unpleasant demeanor, and then have seen their attitude change drastically when dealing with me or one of my black co-workers. I say "visually white" BTW, because two of the girls I remember witnessing being discriminated against were hispanic, but have much lighter colored skin than myself. But who knows, it could have been sexism since they were both females, or agism since they were both 10 years or more younger than me. It was really sad since both were very good at their jobs and more knowledgeable than myself when it came to answering questions. Regardless of the reasons why, I thought this behavior was pretty shitty. And sadly, I witnessed it repeatedly._________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake

Last edited by Darqcyde on Fri Feb 22, 2013 8:49 pm; edited 1 time in total

And we get to give them hell when they cross our line. Either in person, if we so feel (or dare), or in the realm of social media.

Hear, hear! If it makes me an asshole to stand up and say "That's not funny; it's tasteless, offensive, and something that a Neanderthal would blush to think," then it makes me an asshole. I can live with my own ass-holery.

But, if I'm an asshole to protest or to mock someone who gives such offense, then perhaps it needs to be asked: what is the person who gave the offense, in the name of "humor" or otherwise?_________________I am only a somewhat arbitrary sequence of raised and lowered voltages to which your mind insists upon assigning meaning

And we get to give them hell when they cross our line. Either in person, if we so feel (or dare), or in the realm of social media.

Hear, hear! If it makes me an asshole to stand up and say "That's not funny; it's tasteless, offensive, and something that a Neanderthal would blush to think," then it makes me an asshole. I can live with my own ass-holery.

But, if I'm an asshole to protest or to mock someone who gives such offense, then perhaps it needs to be asked: what is the person who gave the offense, in the name of "humor" or otherwise?

To wit: is it ok to make fun of people for being racist? If you're mocking them satirically for being racist, where does it cross a line?_________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake

well, then forget any particular comedian or whether or not one version of a story is correct. in general: is it appropriate for a comedian to make a joke that says, essentially, it's funny for a woman to be gang-raped?

Louis CK called a woman a daft cunt because she heckled him. Was he in the right to call her that? I think so. You're losing context here because he didn't just look out into the audience and find a random girl and said "Wouldn't it be funny right now if you were gang raped?"

actually, if you are going by the story posted, she wasn't in fact heckling him (i.e., she did not interrupt a monologue). he had asked the audience what they wanted him to talk about, someone said 'rape', he said 'yeah, rapes jokes are always funny', the woman said, no they aren't - and then he made his 'joke'. so he hadn't started his bit, he was interacting with the audience. so can we please drop the 'hecklers deserve whatever they get defense'? it's a misrepresentation of the situation.

trustedfaith wrote:

mouse wrote:

as there is a difference between, say, a black comedian making fun of white people to a white audience, and a white comedian making fun of black people to that same audience. if you think there is not - try telling some racist jokes to the next few black people you meet. i think you will find that jokes can be deadly serious, and they can have a real effect on people (and i'm not just talking about putting the comedian at risk of being beaten up). jokes that denigrate people are not that different from direct bullying - they are told to humiliate people, to make them fair game for attacks.

Again, you're projecting how that affects you onto other people. If it upsets you, don't go to the show. But I'll do you one better... here are some white comedians telling some pretty funny black jokes to black people who are laughing btw...

um....i give you the example of a white comedian telling jokes about blacks to a WHITE audience - and you say oh, that's no problem at all, here are some examples of people telling black jokes to a BLACK audience.....do you really not understand the difference? i'm getting that you have absolutely no idea that some people/groups/whatever are in positions of power, and other people/groups/whatever are not. i am happy for you in your innocent world, but it's not the reality for most of us.

really, apparently the only chance i have of getting you to actually understand what i am talking about is looking up a selection of jokes, and i absolutely don't have time for that. let me just say: whether you believe it or not, jokes can be hurtful. and people can even intend them to be hurtful, even though they say "it was just a joke".

maybe you should go back over the parts of the feminism thread about rape culture._________________aka: neverscared!

look - i'm sure there is some ku klux klansian comedian who has a whole slew of racist jokes that has them rolling in the aisles at the konklaves. by your definition, that's just great - he made people laugh! and by you, the fact that he makes them laugh by denigrating other people (and seriously - do you believe a racist joke is _not_ deliberately denigrating other people?) - that's irrelevant. as long as he makes them laugh, he has crossed no lines?_________________aka: neverscared!

If you're mocking them satirically for being racist, where does it cross a line?

Well, one could answer, "at just about the same moment as the writers of South Park thought up the idea."

(Sorry, Darq; I'm not a big South Park fan.)

Now, does this episode of South Park cross the line so far that I'm willing to stand up and raise a fuss about it? No, not really. Heck, I even did chuckle a couple times during what I watched. But I only watched about the first half of the episode before closing the tab down, because, frankly, most of the jokes just made me feel uncomfortable. And that tends to be the case for just about all of South Park, as far as I'm concerned. On the sliding scale from"gaspingly funny" to "outrageously offensive," South Park, for me, tends consistently to fall just a little bit more than halfway towards the offensive end of things. Which is why I don't watch it, really. I can see the attempts at irony; I can even see how others find it hilariously ironic. But it just doesn't do it, for me.

If South Park were a stand-up comic, I'd probably just finish my drink and quietly walk out halfway through the set. If South Park said anything into the mic about me walking out politely and quietly, then I might flip 'em the bird as I continued leaving, but that'd be the most effort it'd be worth on my part. And, who knows? Maybe South Park could turn that into some funny impromptu jokes for the rest of the audience. But I wouldn't be there to hear it, and that's about as far as I'd be willing to go in the case of humor like theirs: "Y'all have fun; I'm outta here."

Tosh, on the other hand, would get a vocal response of at least "Hey, not cool, ass-wipe!" to that rape comment, and I'd demand to see the club's manager about getting my cover charge back on my way out the door, my drink left unfinished on the table. He's firmly on the offensive end of the scale._________________I am only a somewhat arbitrary sequence of raised and lowered voltages to which your mind insists upon assigning meaning